


Where the Love Light Gleams

by MoonlightShines (Thatkillervibe)



Series: 12 Days of Killervibe 2018 [4]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Barry gets angry, Bromance, Caitlin knows how to buy a gift, Christmas Fluff, Cisco goes all out, F/M, Shopping, boys overthinking things, everyone is gaga over baby Jenna
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-09-30 23:43:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17233382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thatkillervibe/pseuds/MoonlightShines
Summary: It's Christmas time, and Cisco needs a perfect gift for Caitlin.Written for 12 Days of Killervibe





	Where the Love Light Gleams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ciscoscaitlin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ciscoscaitlin/gifts).



“This is a disaster!”  
  
Barry rolled his eyes at Cisco, shifting the weight of his twelve shopping bags with a weird little hopping motion.   
  
“Cisco, calm down.”  
  
“I can’t!” Cisco exclaimed, throwing his empty arms out wildly, nearly knocking down a row of Bath and Bodyworks perfumes.

 “If I don’t find something in the next fifteen minutes Christmas is  _ruined_.”  
  
“Not finding a gift for Caitlin in 15 minutes will not ruin Christmas,” Barry muttered, beating a lady from snatching the last Vanilla Bean Noel shower gel from off the shelf.  
  
“Caitlin doesn’t even technically celebrate Christmas.”  
  
“That’s not helping,” Cisco snapped, “that means that I’m already late in giving her a gift.”  
  
“I thought you agreed on just swapping gifts at our Christmas party at Joe’s?”  
  
“We did.”  
  
“What’s the big deal, then? Just get her some nice soap or something. That’s what I’m doing.” Barry waved a bar of soft lilac in his face before depositing it in his basket.  
  
Cisco scoffed, “I can’t buy Caitlin  _soap_.”  
  
“Cecile says you can If it’s very nice soap.”

“ _Ohhh my god._ ”

Barry stopped his frenetic shopping to pause and give Cisco a funny look. “Am I missing something? You’ve never been bad at presents.”  
  
Cisco studied some pine scented hand lotion and shrugged. “I guess I just want to get her something special this year.”

  
“Why?”   
  
Cisco shrugged again. “I don’t know. I just feel like I should. Don’t you feel that way with Iris?”  
  
Barry lifted his 13 bags sheepishly. “Iris is easy to shop for. She usually says I spoil her too much.”  
  
Cisco glared at Barry’s haul. “You’re kidding,” he deadpanned.   
  
Barry missed his sarcasm by a mile, “Oh yeah, I mean Christmas is just that time of year where you get away with buying way too much—It’s fun and—“ Barry stopped abruptly in the queue for the cash, causing Cisco and then a series of five other people behind them to stumble into each other like dominoes.  
  
“Barry,” Cisco warned, pushing him forward to prevent a public outcry.   
  
Barry shuffled forward but spun on his heel to give Cisco a feral smile.   
  
“What?”   
  
Barry hummed, looking smug. The cashier called for the next in line and Barry started to unload his basket.   
  
Cisco leaned his elbow against the check-out counter, frowning at Barry suspiciously.   
  
“What?” he asked again.   
  
“Nothing.” That very clearly did not mean nothing.   
  
“That’ll be $56.98, sir,” the employee chirped, and Barry tapped his card with his charming Barry Allen smile.   
  
“Merry Christmas!” Barry beamed at her when she handed him his 13th purchase of the day.   
  
Cisco watched him struggle out the door.   
  
“You need help with that?”  
  
“Nah, I got it,” Barry replied, looking left then right and Flashing away.   
  
Cisco blinked and then blinked again to find Barry back, red faced and empty handed. Clearly he put his stuff away in the car.   
  
Barry smirked at Cisco, folding his arms over his chest. 

“You’re stressing over finding Caitlin the perfect gift.”

  
“A little,” Cisco agreed.   
  
“Because you want to impress her.”  
  
Cisco scratched his hair, “Uh…no? Because I want to get her something she deserves?”    
  
“Because…?” Barry prompted.  
  
“…Because I love her?” Cisco replied in the same tone.   
  
Barry waggled his eyebrows triumphantly. “Say that again?”  
  
Cisco’s brain lagged, “Because I love her—Oh shit.”  
  
Barry cackled At Cisco’s dumb struck face. “I’ve been waiting five years for this.”  
  
Cisco stopped to drop onto a bench in the middle of the mall meant for the sick and elderly.   
  
“Oh Barry. This isn’t news. I know.”  
  
Barry’s mouth dropped open to talk and Cisco held out his hand, interrupting him. “I didn’t mean to tell anybody.”  
  
“What? Why not?”   
  
“Because Barry, no offence, but I’m friends with people like you and Ralph and Sherloque. You suck at secrets. Please don’t blow this up.”  
  
Barry sat down on the bench beside him.   
  
“It doesn’t have to be a secret. You should tell her.” Barry started to grin, “Do it on Christmas!”   
  
Cisco bristled. “Don’t say that.”   
  
“Why not?” Barry supplied, “This is amazing. You can get her something romantic and then confess your feelings.”   
  
Cisco looked at Barry as if he had three heads.   
  
“….No?”  
  
“No?”   
  
“Rejection on Christmas? I don’t think so.”   
  
“Oh come on, Caitlin won’t reject you. She has feelings. Trust me.”   
  
“Yes, she can, she absolutely can. She’d be allowed to, and she might.”   
  
Barry put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “ _Dude.”_  
  
Cisco crossed his arms over his coat and shook his head. 

“Can we just work on trying to get her a good gift? I want her to have that regardless of my feelings.”  
  
An old man with a cane hobbled down the mall, and Cisco quickly hopped up to offer him his seat.   
  
Barry bumped his shoulder with his own as they made their way back to the center of the mall. “Sure. Where to next?”  
  
Cisco twirled around, taking in all of the commercialism and wrinkled his nose. Nothing about this screamed  _Caitlin_  to him, and  _of course it shouldn’t, none of this was Caitlin at all.  
_  
Besides, he doesn’t want to fall upon the perfect gift for her because some salesperson smoothed talked him into it or because it was on sale.   
  
It needs to be  _more_  than that.   
  
They passed by a Build-A-Bear full of children and a swamped Pandora.  
  
An idea struck him, and he tugged Barry along the way to the nearest exit.   
  
“You know what Bear, let’s go home.”  
  
Cisco waited for Barry to drive down the road after dropping him off at home before he breached back to Star Labs.   
  
He switched on the light to his workshop and plopped down at his desk, carefully depositing all of the materials in front of him.   
  
He pulled out his tools, then looked at the time.   
  
Two days. That was enough to turn these scraps into something special, right?   
  
Of course it was. He’s made gizmos that defeated evil villains in less than a half hour from scratch. A gift for Caitlin couldn’t be that hard. He’s made Iris’s explosive earrings and Caitlin’s solar power dampener necklace. This shouldn’t be a big deal.  
  
Two hours later, Cisco was banging his head against his desk with a long drawn out groan.   
  
It was. It was. It was.

  
  
~.~

  
  
What Cisco liked best about Christmas time, was the smiles on everyone’s faces.   
  
He sat nursing a strong cup of eggnog as everyone opened their gifts around the West’s tree.   
  
They were being lazy, knowing that the majority of the boxes here were for cute little Jenna, who was too young to open them anyways. She’s barely a year old, but that doesn’t stop them from catering the infant like she’s royalty.   
  
Cisco was guilty himself, having got her both a play pen full of age appropriate stuffed toys and custom made The Flash, Kid Flash, Vibe and Killer Frost onesies.   
  
Cecile lifted her up in the air from the floor where she had changed her into the sixth outfit of the day and blew a raspberry into her belly. “Oooh look how cute this hairband is!” She cooed. “Thank you, Caitlin! Say thank you Caitlin, baby! Yes, we’re saying thank you!”  
  
Cisco pressed his socked foot against her folded legs on the couch they were sharing. She smiled at Cecile. “It’s my pleasure. She’s adorable.”  
  
“It’s yoooooour turn,” Iris sang, rummaging under the tree for a gift with Caitlin’s name tag. That’s how they made it work. Whoever gifted a present were then next to receive, unless it was for Jenna, then they placed the baby in front of the gifts and picked whichever one her chubby fingers reached out for first.  
  
She picked a simple green box. She shook it, “Oooh, this one’s from Cisco.”  
  
Caitlin took the gift from Iris and inspected the red bow.   
  
“Complimentary colours,” she commented, giving Cisco a little smirk.   
  
Barry shot him what Cisco could only assume was Barry’s idea of a sneaky look.   
  
Cisco pressed his toes into Caitlin’s legs again, and she swung her leg out to retaliate as she opened the box.   
  
A simple purple scarf tumbled out.   
  
“Wow,” Caitlin said, “this is very nice.”  
  
Everyone oohed and ahed. Except Barry. His eyes bugged out like Cisco just infected her with a terrible disease.  
  
What stunned Cisco the most was that she wasn’t faking it, even though that scarf had very obviously been the plainest gift anyone had received today.

  
Cisco fiddled with the box in his pocket, aching to just stop and swap them all with a  _“gotcha!”_  but he knew that he couldn’t do it properly with everyone’s eyes trained on them. 

He had meant to, but then chickened out, and ran to the mall last minute yesterday to grab a random nice scarf and wrapped it to put under the tree instead.

  
“Thank you, Cisco.” She leaned forward to give him a hug.  
  
“You welcome,” he replied, looking down at his lap.   
  
Iris went digging under the tree for a present for Cisco.   
  
There only was one left for him, having had already opened most of them a while back.   
  
Iris handed him a decently sized gift box.

“And this one is from Caitlin.”  
  
He glanced at her, who was staring back anxiously, her nails close to her mouth.   
  
He lifted the cover and removed the tissue paper.   
  
A beautiful expensive black leather jacket. She knew his old one was although well-loved, worn out and not warm anymore.   
  
“Oh, Cait,” he murmured, picking it up in his hands. It was gorgeous. He could wear this everyday.   
  
“Try it on,” she urged him. He had to shrug himself out of the swaddle of blankets they were cocooned under, and slipped his arms through the sleeves.   
  
Joe whistled, damn impressed. “Mr. Ramon, look at you.”  
  
“It’s really very nice, Cisco,” Iris agreed, a little distracted at how it fit against his biceps.    
  
Cisco was slightly alarmed by that, giving Barry a look, which Barry shared with him in equal measure.   
  
“Barry you should get one of those.”  
  
Barry coughed. “Hey! I think Iris that present is for you! Nora, help me find one,” he said quickly, speeding under the tree for one that was for her.  
  
Iris frowned. “But it’s Caitlin’s turn again.”  
  
“Nope! This one’s for you. It’s your turn. Caitlin won’t mind.”  
  
Caitlin shook her head, visibly amused.   
  
He got off the couch to pull Caitlin into a real hug. She held him tightly when he thanked her, and it made his heart thump in his chest.   
  
He took the jacket off and folded it back neatly, placing it next to Caitlin’s new scarf. 

Now he just felt crummy.

 He knew that wasn’t all he had for her, but she  _didn’t_ yet, and he very much hoped she didn’t feel disheartened by it.   
  
A half hour later, presents were over and everyone had dispersed throughout the house.   
  
Cisco stretched his arms over his head as he untangled himself from the couch and had not had even four seconds of peace before Barry came barreling into him, Flashing him outside in the cold.  
  
“What the hell, man?” Cisco groused, shivering in the snow.   
  
“A scarf!?” Barry seethed, “A scarf? That’s what you call special? You may as well have gotten her the soap!”  
  
Cisco took a step back, rolling his eyes at Barry’s self-righteous anger. “Okay, first, relax. Second, I appreciate your protectiveness of Caitlin, but you don’t have a clue as to what you’re talking about.”  
  
“Oh yeah? Because it looks to me like you just gave Caitlin the most pathetic excuse of a gift after a whole afternoon of giving everyone else nice stuff.”  
  
Cisco cringed. When he put it like that…  
  
“I get that’s how it looks like, which is on me, okay, I know. I panicked so the scarf became a deploy.”

“So you have a better gift then?”

“Yes, Barry.”

“Good, because Caitlin deserves better than that from you.”

That was a tad too intense for just a concerned friend invested in his bffs’ relationship.

“Okay,” Cisco replied patiently, “But let’s say I did give her the scarf and that’s it, why are you so mad?”  
  
Barry’s face screwed up. “Um…”  
  
“Oh no.”

“Uh…”

“Barry!”  
  
Barry scratched his head. “It may have come up in a conversation yesterday.”  
  
Cisco’s felt his heart drop to his shoes and became overwhelmed with dread. “Bartholomew Henry Allen, what did you tell her?”  
  
“Not that you’re in love with her!” he shouted out quickly, to which Cisco smacked him hard. “Just that you were stressed about getting her something special. And then you proceeded to get her something lame. And very  _un-_ special. And  _then_ she gave you that jacket!”   


Cisco groaned, burying his head in his hands.   
  
“Barry. I love you and it’s Christmas, so I’m going to be nice, but this is exactly why I didn’t want to tell anyone anything about this.”  
  
“As long as you’re not lying about that scarf not being the only thing you have.”  
  
Cisco’s hand went straight to his pocket, clenching the box in there.   
  
“I’m not.”  
  
“Then good,” Barry repeated.

  
The two stared at each other before cracking smiles, beginning to laugh.   
  
“Also what was that back there? Were you actually jealous that Iris, your  _wife_ , was looking at me in that leather?”  
  
Cisco shoved Barry and Barry shoved right back, rolling his eyes at his own stupidity. “Yeah, yeah. Caitlin knew what she was doing. You looked good!”   
  
“Hey Bear,” he said, freezing to pieces, but struck with the sudden need to tell Barry.   
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“You know how Dante and I never really got along…”  
  
Barry leaned against Joe’s brick house, furrowing his brows.   
  
“I thought that’s just what it meant to have a brother. That there’s just always animosity and friction underlying the relationship because that’s how things were.”  
  
Cisco smiled at Barry. “And then I met you. I guess what I’m trying to say is, Merry Christmas, hermano. You annoy me to no end but you call me out on my shit and still do your best to protect and encourage me. It’s what I love best about you.”   
  
Barry was a bouncing ball of grinning fluff.   
  
“You’re my brother too, man. Can we hug?”   
  
Cisco laughed, opening his arms, “yeah, I better get a hug if I end up catching pneumonia because of this.”  
  
Cecile opened the door. “Boys, enough with the bromance out in the cold, I’m not sending anyone to the ER this Christmas.”  
  
They stomped off the snow from their shoes obediently and singled filed back into the house.   
  
Cisco went beelining to the kitchen for some of hot chocolate as an attempt to regain feeling in his fingers.   
  
He found Caitlin there, messing around with the fillings of one of her pies.   
  
“Hey you. Want a pie assistant?”  
  
She startled, nearly dropping her spoon of chopped apples.   
  
She looked up and bit her lip. “I’d never say no to a man offering help in the kitchen.”  
  
Cisco took a chug of his hot drink then rolled up his sleeves.  
  
“Can you poke holes in that one so it can breathe?”  
  
Cisco took the fork and began stabbing.   
  
In ten minutes, they had all three pies in the oven.   
  
Caitlin washed the dough off her hands as Cisco refilled his lukewarm mug.   
  
His other hand went back to the box in his pocket.  
  
It made sense to do it now.  
  
There wasn’t anyone else in the kitchen, the turkey still needed an extra hour and a half anyways, and the last Cisco heard was that they were setting up a movie to watch in the living room.   
  
Cisco leaned against Joe’s creaky cabinets.  
  
“So, I’ve got to be honest with you. I didn’t give you your present yet.”   
  
Caitlin’s hand stilled over the soap dispenser, leaving the water running down the drain. She turned her head over her shoulder.   
  
“What do you mean? You got me that lovely scarf.”  
  
“Not really. That’s the fake gift.”  
  
Caitlin looked down at her wet hands and frowned. “Oh,” she said softly, her face falling even more. “Do you want it back?”  
  
“No no!” Cisco rushed, “Keep it, it’s for you!”  
  
“Then what do you mean?”  
  
“I mean, what I really want to give you, I wanted to be in private. Not in front of,” he made a frivolous gesture with his hand, “All of this.”  
  
Caitlin took off her apron and twisted her hair to the side, uncertain.   
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Okay,” he said, and closed the door to the kitchen. He pulled out a chair from the kitchen table.  “Sit.”   
  
He took the opposite chair and sat across from her. Cutting straight to the chase, he asked, “Be honest. What did you think of the scarf? I know Barry spoke to you about my gift. Did he rise your hopes up?”  
  
Caitlin dug her fingers in to ends of her dress’ sleeves. “A little. I really do like the scarf, but it was a bit…Bland…compared to what you gifted everyone else. It made me feel a bit.”  
  
“Icky?” Cisco guessed.   
  
Caitlin shrugged. “I didn’t want to feel that way. It just happened.”  
  
“Yeah, Caitlin that was  _never_ my intention. Barry shouldn’t have said anything. I wanted to surprise you.”  
  
“With what?”   
  
“Close your eyes first.”  
  
Caitlin raised an eyebrow. “Really?”  
  
“Yes!” He insisted, it would be easier for him to say what he needed to without her eyes all tender and pretty on his while he did it.   
  
She listened to him, closing her eyes with a little smile played on her lips.   
  
“Hold out your hands.”  
  
She cupped them in front of her.   
  
Cisco removed the box from his pocket to place it gently in the palm of her hands.   
  
Her finger instinctively curled around the edges.   
  
“Keep them closed,” Cisco said, as he put a hand over her jiggling knee.   
  
“So, there’s a few things I want to explain first. Before you see your Hanukkah/Christmas/Holiday present. The first is that Barry was right. I was stressing over your gift. I usually do, actually, but this year was different. You had a tough year, losing Killer Frost, then finding your dad. And I wanted you to—I don’t know, it’s silly, I guess, because it doesn’t have to all go in a gift, but I wanted something for you to see how much I cared about what you went through. Something that was special enough to be uniquely for you, so that you looked at it, you’d always know it was from me.”  
  
Her fingers twitched against the box, her mouth parting open slightly at his words.   
  
“The second is that you are absolutely my best friend in the entire world, and so you should know that I’d always treat anything for you from me as important. You’re never an afterthought, Caitlin. You’re my number one on speed dial, my go-to. My partner in do good, instead of crime.”  
  
“Cisco please let me open it, this wait is killing me.”   
  
Cisco chuckled, “Alright, fine. Open your eyes.”  
  
Caitlin did, and he watched her eyelashes flutter as she blinked down at the box. She took off the cover and picked up the bracelet fastened on the little cushion inside.  
  
“Is this a….”  
  
“A charm bracelet.”   
  
“It’s gorgeous,” she breathed.   
  
It took him 18 hours to wield, carve and meld the bracelet and each intricate charm. It wasn’t pure gold or silver or bronze, but he had alloys sitting around in his workshop taken from shrapnel of tech, suits and finite Earth 2 metals. It was still shiny, and beautifully made, if Cisco thought so himself, gleaming in the light.   
  
Cisco unclasped the bracelet when she held out her arm for him to put it around her wrist.   
  
She inspected it as all the parts clinked gently against each other. She picked up the first charm. A slim, delicate C, that ended with a swirl.   
  
“C for Caitlin,” Cisco explained.   
  
“For Cisco too,” she said.   
  
He shrugged, fighting his blush, “If you want.”  
  
Caitlin dropped her elbow onto the table, laying her arm in between them.   
  
Cisco took the second charm, holding it up between his index finger and thumb.   
  
“A snowflake for Dr. Snow, Killer Frost and your powers.”  
  
He dropped it and went for the third.   
  
“A star for Star Labs. Where we first met everyone.”  
  
“Our home,” she smiled softly.   
  
“Exactly.”   
  
The lightening bolt that dangled next to the star was self-evident. “Team Flash?” She guessed.   
  
“Team Flash and Barry,” Cisco confirmed. “Who knew our coma guy would become our family?”  
  
Caitlin shook her head fondly, and picked out the charm shaped as glasses.   
  
“They’re my vibe goggles. For me. You know, when Barry first suggested the name, I was like, hmm, that’s not bad, but…It was when you repeated it, whispering it brightly, your eyes all aglow that I knew it was the one.”  
  
“Cisco…” She said, sounding speechless.   
  
“And of course, because this is me, I connected an itsy bitsy extrapolator in the goggles so you’d have a way to breach.”  
  
“Wait, you  _made_  this. The whole bracelet. From scratch.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Oh my god,” Caitlin sat up straighter. “No! Really?” 

She turned the figurine in her hand. It was the metal switch on the arm of goggles. To anyone else, it’ll just look like they fold open and close, but truly, that was the signal of a breach opening.    
  
She opened the arm of the charm and sure enough that vibrantly blue swirl of a breach popped up in the middle of Joe and Cecile’s kitchen.   
  
She closed the arm and the breach disappeared instantly.   
  
“That’s amazing. Cisco this is just…You’re fantastic.”  
  
There were two more charms left.   
  
Caitlin studied the miniature microscope. “Your STEM roots,” Cisco supplied. 

“We wouldn’t be here without them. You’re intellect and strength in medicine has saved us all so many times.”  
  
“You have too!”   
  
Cisco tapped his knuckles against the green tablecloth. “But this is about you.”  
  
There was only the last one left. It was by far the most detailed and noticeable. A showstopper piece that would make someone pause to say:  _Wow, that’s really nice._  
  
It was the charm Cisco spent the most time on, pouring all his feelings into it.   
  
He debated whether or not he should even include it on the bracelet. Despite what Barry said, Cisco genuinely planned this to be simply about Caitlin and their friendship, not what Cisco was grappling with.   
  
But that wouldn’t have been honest.   
  
They fell silent, looking at the heart charm, the soundtrack to  _A Charlie Brown Christmas_  seeping through from the living room.   
  
He played with the bracelet, avoiding her actual hand.   
  
“That one,” he started. “Um.”  
  
“You can tell me.”  
  
Cisco knew he was a sensitive person, but this was making him feel vulnerable unlike anything before.   
  
Caitlin lifted her free arm and took his hand. He looked at her, surprised to see the tears welling in her eyes.   
  
“You have my heart, Caitlin. You always will. I just thought you should know.”   
  
A little noise escaped from her mouth, and she let go of Cisco to cover it.   
  
In that moment, he knew that she knew.   
  
“Please tell me if that’s not okay.”  
  
She retreated her arm with the charm bracelet from off the table to throw them around his neck.

Cisco held her burying his face into the crook of her neck with baited breath.

“Cisco,” she whispered, “how could you think I don’t love you too?”

“What?”

She leaned back, wiping the tears from her eyes as she looked at him like he hung the moon, like, Cisco realized, how he’s always looked at her.

“Caitlin…”

“I love you.”

Barry opened the door, startling both of them violently. “Hey guys—I just wanted to know if you wanted to watch—“ 

He stopped abruptly, assessing them, how close they were and their particularly irritated faces. 

“Oh.” His face lit up and he pumped his fist. “Yes! I’ll give you another fifteen minutes!  _Yes!_ ” 

He closed the door and they heard him holler, “Nobody go in the kitchen for the next 20 minutes! Love is happening! Merry Christmas!”

They stared at each other after Barry closed the door, growing slow smiles.

“Cisco,” Caitlin said softly. “Close your eyes.”

He did, feeling her hands brush against his neck, the charms chiming next to his ear as she kissed him breathless.

He inhaled sharply, wrapping his arms around her waist against the smooth velvety material of her sweater dress. He tried to convey the way his heart was bursting, his head was floating, how she made him feel, how she has almost always made him so indescribably happy.

He broke the kiss only because he seriously wasn’t sure he’d make another ten seconds of her mouth on his without dying. He was already addicted to her taste.

“Wait,” she panted, after grabbing his face to kiss him harder. She leaned her head against his, brushing their noses together.

“Having  _you_  is better than anything I could ever ask for.”


End file.
